Start-up Spotlight

How a tech-en­abled plat­form is pi­o­neer­ing the con­cept of rental co-liv­ing spa­ces

What is it?

Lack of good, com­fort­able and af­ford­able liv­ing spa­ces for work­ing pro­fes­sion­als and col­lege stu­dents, made Uday Lakkar, 32, and Am­ber Sa­jid, 42, start CoHo, a tech-en­abled plat­form pi­o­neer­ing the con­cept of rental co-liv­ing spa­ces. CoHo, which stands for com­fort­able homes, is where res­i­dents, in the age group of 18 to 30 years, ei­ther work­ing or study­ing, live to­gether as a com­mu­nity at well-fur­nished, taste­fully done prop­er­ties with all es­sen­tial util­i­ties and main­te­nance taken care of by pro­fes­sional ser­vice providers. With three mod­ules—apart­ments, vil­las and dorms, and rental vary­ing be­tween Rs 10,000 and Rs 25,000 per month, CoHo prop­er­ties are not just crash pads but spa­ces where the young live to­gether, cre­ate and share mem­o­ries, so­cialise and en­ter­tain in-house. Lever­ag­ing tech­nol­ogy heav­ily across dif­fer­ent as­pects of liv­ing such as online concierge, smart locks, pre-paid me­ter­ing sys­tems, and chat-bots in the res­i­dent app, CoHo seeks to dis­rupt the way Gen­er­a­tion Y lives.

The growth

CoHo is spread across Delhi and NCR. It has ramped up three times in the last three quar­ters, and is look­ing to scale four times from cur­rent lev­els this year. “The 14-mem­ber team which op­er­ates out of Gur­gaon, en­sures that res­i­dents stay con­nected 24x7 through the CoHo app,” says Sa­jid.

The chal­lenges

“Ma­jor chal­lenges faced are in terms of spread­ing aware­ness about the con­cept and build­ing trust, since the in­dus­try suf­fers an un­pro­fes­sional ap­proach from bro­kers,” says Lakkar.

The fu­ture

Op­ti­mistic, given the pos­i­tive re­sponse to their start-up and fol­low-ups from new res­i­dents, Lakkar and Sa­jid in­tend to ex­pand CoHo to the top eight cities in the coun­try in next 12 to 18 months.

The co-liv­ing model is wit­ness­ing enough scal­a­bil­ity in in­ter­na­tional mar­kets such as China, US and UK. In­dia is just wait­ing to ex­plode in this space. Uday Lakker, co-founder, CoHo, Gur­gaon